Doubling down on bad ideas

Patch 7.2 will give us crafted legendaries. You can read the details of what we know about them thus far in this summary from MMO-C. Now, of course, Patch 7.2 is still undergoing a lot of changes, and the initial info on these legendaries could change a lot between now and live, but let me just say for the record:

What the hell, Blizz? Has the cheese finally slipped off your cracker?

Legendary implementation thus far in Legion has been a huge mistake, Blizz themselves have as much as admitted it. Yet they keep trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit, and no one is clamoring for the sandwiches, so part of their solution is to add a line of artisan breads.

There are so many things wrong with the proposed implementation of this, I hardly know where to start. The basic plan is that players will be able to do a whole new series of profession quests that will allow them to collect rare materials that will allow them to craft leather/mail/cloth/plate legendary gear for specific classes.

First, the — admittedly still vague — quest lines for each profession involve defeating various raid bosses. This of course is Blizz doubling down on the main complaint about professions in Legion — they require raid level gear not to mention In some cases regular running of raids so as to be lucky enough to get the RNG recipe drops.

Second, crafting the legendary items requires what appears to be a host of very expensive and/or rare mats — 65 Blood of Sargeras, profession mats, something referred to only as “legendary mats” from quests, and a new mat called Felessence Legion-Flask. The latter is one of those horrible crafted (we don’t know by whom — all crafters or just alchemists) abominations that requires making a gray item, then upgrading it until it reaches “legendary” status. This is Blizz doubling down on the whole idea of ensuring that no one plays an alt for pure pleasure or to help out a main. If you have not had enough time to get your profession alts to level 800, you will not have enough time to have them craft a legendary, I guarantee.

Third, the crafted legendaries are BoP. Yup, you read that right. BoP. Thus, any character can only make this gear for itself. Your leatherworker better wear leather or mail, because she damn sure will not be able to make a piece of legendary gear for any other alt. There may be more of these crafted legendaries not yet announced, but so far characters that do not have a “classic” armor crafting profession — for example engineers or alchemists or inscriptionists — are S.O.L. And remember, early on in Legion, Blizz pretty much pushed many characters into having only one crafting profession because gathering professions are much more lucrative for garnering Blood of Sargeras (also BoP). So chances are a lot of players no longer have dual-crafting professions. Oh, and of course, making these crafted legendaries BoP also means they cannot be sold, just another little gotcha from Blizz.

Fourth, the current tooltip for these legendaries indicates they count as a normal legendary for equipping — thus they will be the one or the one of two you are allowed to equip. However, none of these legendaries appear to have any special abilities. Yup, they are stat sticks. So they might up your gear level a bit, but if you have any of the actual ability-boosting legendaries equipped, crafted will likely be last choice as a legendary. (Unless, of course, Blizz goes ahead and negates all current legendary damage, defensive, and healing bonuses — do not count that out as a possibility.)

Fifth — and this is the kicker — it looks like they will be level 910. Yes, again, you read that right — after going through all I described above, you will be left with a level 910 legendary. Trust me, any character able to do all the steps necessary to craft one of these will not need level 910 gear. I presume you will be able to upgrade them as we now upgrade the “old” legendaries, but guess what? That means you get to add another couple of weeks to the gear just to get it to a level that benefits you. (Oh, and it also is a way for Blizz to keep that ridiculous legendary upgrade quest line going.)

I honestly wonder what is in the water or air at Blizz HQ. Think about it, what are the parts of Legion people seem to complain about the most? It is as if Blizz has a working list of these complaints and used it to design these crafted legendaries. They have doubled down on many of the major perceived problems with this expansion. It reminds me of their reaction in WoD to the massive complaints about garrisons: they doubled down on them by requiring even more garrison work just to be able to see the new Tanaan content. “You don’t LIKE this? BWAAAAAHAAAAAA, well then you will HATE this!!!! That will teach you to complain!”

So, if you hate Legion professions, if you think legendaries are a failure, if you have given up on alts because Blizz does not approve of the way you play them — stay tuned. Blizz appears to be sensitive to player dissatisfaction, and the louder the complaints, the more they are going to shove it down our throats.

I don’t think I have read anything official on increasing the number of legendary slots, but I seem to remember a coy little remark about it in one of the dev Q&As. Still, everything so far points to any crafted legendary being inferior to any “regular” one, even if none are the “good” ones. I have not compared primary and secondary stats, but unless the crafted ones are a lot higher than others, then even a “boutique” bonus ability would seem to be better than a straight stat stick.

When I first heard of this I thought “intriguing, sounds like a way of mitigating the insane RNG for Legendary gear”.

I really enjoyed going through the Blacksmith quests in MoP to learn how to make the top level crafted weapons. Yes they needed exotic mats, and you had to travel to the Thunder Forge to craft them, but at least you could sell them or pass them to alts. Making the new ones BoP is an instant “nope”. (Actually I used a much harsher word, you can insert your own invective of choice).

I’m guessing I’ll just be ignoring these entirely from what I’ve read so far. Hopefully the dev team in charge of these items will see sense prior to it going live. Not holding my breath though.

Well, there was a blue comment soon after I posted this (no connection) that seemed to go to some lengths to tell people the whole idea is not really any further than spitballing, it is VERY early in the process, there will be tons of changes, it was only data mining, etc. etc. etc. It sounded to me like the initial data mined info might have been a trial balloon. Like you, I am skeptical of the live version having enough changes to make these items useful, but we will see. I am always happy to eat my words if Blizz sees reason and comes through on the side of players.

To me, the larger point is watching how Blizz once again seems to ignore the “big picture” concerns of players and not only reinforce them but add to them. If, for example, a major perceived shortfall of Legion is that crafting professions have become cumbersome and irrelevant, why would you seek to “fix” another problem — the whole legendary mess — by making crafting professions even more cumbersome and irrelevant? This is a continuing pattern, at least for the last couple of expansions, and it is maddening. It is exactly parallel to WoD, where one of the perceived shortfalls was the whole garrison implementation, and Blizz decided to “fix” the problem of no content by requiring a max level+ garrison in order to see the Tanaan content.